Sierra Club to CU: Stop powering Boulder campus with coal

Students blow black-tinged bubbles in protest

Billy Goldrick, left, and Gavin Carew blow "black" bubbles and hold signs to protest the University of Colorado s use of coal for power Wednesday.
(
MARTY CAIVANO
)

Students affiliated with the Sierra Club -- which recently lauded the University of Colorado for being the most "eco-enlightened" college in the country -- on Wednesday called on the campus to go even greener by ceasing to get its energy from the most popular source in Colorado: coal.

A handful of students in bright yellow T-shirts that read "Beyond Coal" blew blackish bubbles from drippy wands on a patch of grass in front of the CU chancellor's office Wednesday afternoon.

The contents of their bottles of Super Miracle Bubbles had been tinted with powdered black paint to symbolize smog and soot emitted from the Valmont coal-burning power plant just east of Boulder.

"It's completely hypocritical that CU, the No. 1 green campus in the country, is fueled by a coal plant," said CU freshman Michael Benko, who held a sign with a drawing of the Valmont plant inside a bubble that said, "Bursting CU's Green Bubble."

"It doesn't make any sense at all."

It's true that the majority of CU's electricity comes from coal, but it's impossible to know how much comes from the Valmont plant because of the way the energy grid is set up, said Dave Newport, director of CU's Environmental Center.

CU gets more than three-quarters of its electricity from Xcel Energy, which generates about 80 percent of its power from burning coal, Newport said.

Benko, an 18-year-old civil engineering major from Santa Cruz, Calif., and another student delivered to the chancellor's office a national Sierra Club report called "Moving Campuses Beyond Coal." The report, which was released at universities nationwide Wednesday, highlights several campuses that the club says should "make a clean break" and move away from burning coal.

CU was not among those highlighted. In fact, the Sierra Club's magazine last month named the Boulder campus the most green in the country based on eco-friendly initiatives such as the campus buses that run on vegetable oil, zero-waste football games and the school's historic commitment to recycling.

The university also has drafted a carbon-neutrality plan that officials hope to finalize by mid-October. Newport said the plan calls for CU to get 60 percent of its electricity from wind by 2030.

"The university sincerely understands the challenge of coal and the opportunities of renewable energy, and we are moving toward that as fast as we can," Newport said.

He said he doesn't see the Sierra Club's campaign as a protest of CU's practices, but, rather, as an affirmation of its actions.

In the past seven years, CU has reduced its energy consumption by 2 to 4 percent each year, said Moe Tabrizi, the campus' energy conservation officer. Up to 10 percent of CU's energy already comes from renewable sources, he said, and the university plans to add more solar panels soon.

Rachel Shiozaki, a Green Corps volunteer working with the CU chapter of the Sierra Club, called the university's efforts "praiseworthy," but said it could do more. She didn't point to a specific plan or timeline for improvement, but said the Sierra Club would like to help expedite the process.

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